


Takes two people to make you, and one people to die

by ThisMessIsAPlace (McFearo)



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen, Twisted Hairs, Ulysses's family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-10 23:07:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11701773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McFearo/pseuds/ThisMessIsAPlace
Summary: "Do you remember your grandmother?"He points to a bead in his mother's braids. It is the color of saguaro, and it shines like the drops of water at Havasu falling in the morning sun."That is her right there," he says.She smiles and tells him he is right.





	Takes two people to make you, and one people to die

**Author's Note:**

> For Day 3 of the Month of Fanfiction challenge: "Family"
> 
> I was actually thinking of writing something bittersweet but my friends are all Satan, and now it's just bitter.
> 
> This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things.
> 
> (Title is from _As I Lay Dying_ by William Faulkner, since I was up to my eyes in it only yesterday.)

His mother's fingers are rough and scratchy. He notices that, but he does not mind it.  
  
She holds her hand with her palm facing up, and his hand sits on hers the same way. He spreads his fingers out as wide as he can make them but they do not go past the outsides of her hand.  
  
He stretches his arm out as long as it will go, to give her room to show him places.  
  
She taps a spot inside his elbow and it tickles, so he laughs. She smiles and laughs back. His father laughs at both of them. He is tending the fire and humming, but he has an ear for them, too.  
  
Mother pokes his elbow again, and he laughs again and squirms. "Stay still now, wiggler. This is Havasu."  
  
She looks at him and he repeats the name. Ha-va-su. He has seen Havasu.  
  
"That's right. Do you remember when we bathed in the falls?"  
  
He does remember. The falls were blue and green and bright. They came down rocks that he thought were red and boring, until he saw them in the morning sun.  
  
His mother's hair is red because of the clay. It is not boring. It is full of knots and charms that shine, because they are so full of stories.  
  
She draws a wiggly line down his arm from the little mole that means Havasu. Her finger itches on his skin. "The creek," he says, and she smiles and tells him he is right.  
  
"Before you were born, and before I was born--"  
  
"A very long time ago," his father says, and he laughs when mother looks at him. But she is smiling, too, with her eyes.  
  
"A time not that long ago," Mother says, "when I was only an idea, your grandmother walked up that creek to find medicine. Do you remember your grandmother?"  
  
He does remember her. He can only see her smiling face in one place in his mind. He can only hear her voice singing one song. But he remembers the stories of her, and so he remembers her. If he carries her stories she is always there.  
  
He points to a bead in his mother's braids. It is the color of saguaro, and it shines like the drops of water at Havasu falling in the morning sun.  
  
"That is her right there," he says.  
  
She smiles and tells him he is right.

* * *

  
  
Orders are simple. New Canaan will burn.  
  
Caesar doesn't give a why, doesn't have to. Doesn't have to explain what the city did. Doesn't have to justify to slaves why he wants that place to sink into the earth and fade away.  
  
Doesn't have to speak who brought his wrath down on the men of God.  
  
Everyone knows. They don't speak the name, not since the Bear ate its own to bite the Bull too. Even slaves broken fresh in the years since know the reason. Tell a man not to speak a word, he'll whisper a dozen more in a dozen ears.  
  
Caesar doesn't explain, and Ulysses doesn't ask. Those are their places in the order of things.  
  
Only needs to say it will be done, and it will be done.  
  
He bows to the throne before he leaves, doesn't even think about it. Mind's on the things he'll have to square away. Doesn't take time to think about customs and courtesies. Muscles do the remembering for him.  
  
Have to take down the fence so the herd can roam. Be a long time walking. Week and some days there, up the hills West of the Long 15. Week and some days back the same way. Time between to get the White Legs trained up for killing men with the gun in them to fight back.  
  
Find the herd in the hills when he comes back, maybe. Or lose them for good. Better than leaving them fenced in with nowhere to run from whatever comes along once he’s gone.  
  
Starting to look too much like home anyway, when a man's watched two homes die.

* * *

  
  
"Your braids are on fire."  
  
He reaches up automatically before it sinks in that it's a joke. His sister laughs at him.  
  
"I was wrong; the smoke was from your ears."  
  
He takes a swipe at her, but she dodges out of the way, dancing along the cliff's edge without fear. He knew she would. Wouldn't have hurt her anyway.  
  
"I called your name three times, daydreamer," she tells him when their antics run their course. "What are you dreaming about?"  
  
He answers with a finger outstretched to the horizon. From where they stand a sea of red and yellow stretches out beneath them, the lazy yawn of the valley. Fades into something cooler and bluer in the distance where it rises again, to meet another plateau on the far side. The sun is on its way down behind those faces, lighting the reds into golds in a thin line where stone meets sky, purpling the clouds above and the shadowed sands below like cactus flowers.  
  
"Be good to see home again," she agrees. She reaches up to hook an arm onto his shoulder and leans into his side. Runs her fingers down one of his locks, then one of her own that's dressed the same. A list of lives and paths they hope to cross again at Dry Wells, if the timing is right, if everyone is home.  
  
Mother, father, brother. They don't have to say the names aloud; they wear them over the roads and the mountains.  
  
"You'll have to pry open your surly mouth and tell them all my story, storykeeper."  
  
"Which?" he asks. "One where you crouched to piss without looking and found yourself a diamondback friend?"  
  
She swipes at him this time and he doesn't bother to dodge, though he could. He can take the hit, too. Wouldn't hurt him anyway.  
  
"That too," she says lightly; takes refuge in bravado. She's not embarrassed of it in front of him but, oh, she will be when he tells it in front of her girl. She might kill him in his sleep if she can manage.  
  
Far be it from him, though, to forsake his solemn brotherly duty, whatever the opposition.  
  
"The whole story, I mean. Where I went my first real scouting with the best of the best and was--" she pauses for a dramatic gasp, then sing-songs the rest: "-- _better than yooouuu~"_  
  
"Bring the snake for a witness," he deadpans.  
  
"Have to," she agrees with a grim nod. "It'll be the only witness left when I push you off this ledge."  
  
He laughs and makes a show of pulling them both away from it like he believes she'd do it. They retreat to their brief camp, in a crevice in the surface of the plateau that they can just fit into and have room to safely build a low fire between them. If he turns the wrong way his broad shoulders will scrape both walls, but it's as much as they need and it keeps them hidden.  
  
Another day to Dry Wells, boldly across open ground if they want, now that their allies in the Legion have tamed this stretch of Arizona. Eighty five tribes and they've found Caesar one more.  
  
They recount their stories to each other, new and old, over a supper of gecko she caught for them. Her eyes light up when he promises to tell her tale to everyone, _without_ the snake. To tell them how she paced and passed him. She takes first watch, too jittery with excitement to sleep.  
  
He drifts off with a smile and the sound of her humming grandmother's song that he passed to her.

* * *

  
  
Halfway down the slopes of the Fort, he sidesteps an overburdened slave and stops.  
  
Wouldn't, normally. Nothing for them. Eyes dead ahead, he only just sees her turn and look at him. And so he stops.  
  
Bravery in it is what gets him first. Ignores them usually, because that is the best kindness he can give them. Only kindness they have it left in them to hope for. Don't look at the men. Don't want to be caught looking. Don't want to catch a man's eye. Keep their eyes down and he strides by, lets them be invisible, what they want -- and that is the way of things.  
  
But she looks.  
  
So does he.  
  
Different without the braids. Hair cropped close under the wrap. Bruise on her mouth the color of the sunset on the horizon.  
  
Still looks so much like their mother.  
  
Eyes drop from his when he looks. Habit that's sunk in beneath the skin. Adjusts her load and shuffles away faster, nothing left in her of the girl who danced on cliffs without fear.  
  
Stares at the spot where she stood when she's gone. Wants to follow--  
  
No.  
  
Nothing for her. Nothing to fix--  
  
Nothing to say.  
  
Doesn't have the means to make her laugh again.  
  
She's died. So has he, twice now.  
  
Tries to remember where she was last. Harder to track slaves' movements than the soldiers' -- numbers on the records, not names. Even names are hard to trace. Changed. Not the ones he grew up hearing and calling. Not the ones he wove into his hair.  
  
Not... Not the ones that were cut off him.  
  
He touches a lock, shorter than he wore once but growing again. Only the old names will go into it.  
  
(Doesn't even know what they call her now, when they call her anything but a thing.)  
  
Must have been at a camp back east. Not certain where, but not here. Definitely not here. Resources coming west then, replacing what the Bear took with it. Preparing to meet it again at the Dam.  
  
One face he knows. Scattered off to the winds before, tribes mixed smooth and even and never given to clump together in groups of the same. To cling to each other or the memories of life before Legion.  
  
One face he knows, hasn't seen for a long time.  
  
How many others?  
  
His hand aches from digging nails into his palm. Scalp aches from tugging on dead names. Drops his arms to his sides and walks on, eyes front.  
  
Hopes he'll make the gate without seeing any more ghosts.

* * *

  
  
They should be together. Should be side by side.  
  
Stupid thing to think. Inane. Missing the point.  
  
He looks up at his mother. Father is farther down the line. Seven crosses between them: two cousins, an uncle, three childhood friends. The old wise woman who cut his first scouting on his arm for him.  
  
For some reason that's the part he picks out of it. Doesn’t know why.  
  
He can't fit the whole of it into his head, maybe. Too full up from the ringing in his ears. So he picks a thing out of many to repeat, again and again, a detail to trouble him:  
  
He wishes his mother and father were side by side.  
  
Her eyes are open. Can't tell if she's still breathing, can't tell if she can see. When the soldiers come for him he lets them take him.  
  
In case she can see.  
  
Doesn’t want the last thing she sees to be him, nailed to a cross. There's no room at her sides. They'd put him farther down the line.  
  
Lets them take him.  
  
It isn't until they cut her story from him that he realizes she is dead.

* * *

  
  
Doesn't make the gate. Doesn’t make ten steps.  
  
"Ulysses! Cursor Ulysses, is it now?"  
  
He stops again. He... doesn’t have the strength to stop. Doesn’t have the strength to keep walking, either. Doesn’t have the strength to look, but he looks. A man strides toward him, beaming.  
  
Marinus. Knows the name. Knows where it's been, what it's done.  
  
Not what Ulysses used to call him when he was small. When Ulysses was younger, when he carried the child who is now the man who is called Marinus on his shoulders, let him feel taller than the world.  
  
One wild moment, the smile looks like a weapon, when it's wielded out of another icon of his mother's face. Hands land Ulysses's shoulders and drag him in. Jerks on reflex, but the legionnaire does not pay that any mind.  
  
Ulysses does not know if he has the strength not to hold his baby brother in his arms.  
  
He does not know if he has it in him to hold Marinus in his arms.  
  
Choice is taken from him: wrapped in an embrace one breath, released the next. Brisk, as though they saw each other last a day ago. Will see each other again in another.  
  
"Thought you were as big as you'd get, and I'd caught up. And yet," Marinus laughs, pats Ulysses's belly. He pushes the hand away from himself.  
  
Marinus pays no mind to that, either. Grins at him, but takes care to look him in the eye. Looks anywhere but at the knots of Ulysses's hair.  
  
Like they're obscene.  
  
"Tarquinius is here, too," he tells him, "and Gratianus. Do you remember them?" He does.

"They'd have _kittens_ to see you, they-- Almost thought we'd miss out on the glory, but the orders came to march west-- I can't believe I caught you!

  
"I thought for sure you'd be off dicking around in the desert somewhere, I'm so glad--"  
  
Goes on but Ulysses loses the thread of it.  
  
Joy in his eyes. Genuine and familiar. Unfamiliar. Hair cut to a jagged line of stubble down the center of his head. Vibrant red at the edges of Ulysses's vision anywhere he looks -- thought it had become dull and boring to him, but it's bright here. Hostile.  
  
"Going," he chokes out. "Work to do. Utah."  
  
Marinus deflates. Only a little. Bursting with too much of himself, as he always has. Collects himself as quickly. "Do you have to go now? We could have a quick meal. Just a few minutes. You'll need supplies for the road, we can use that, buy some time to talk." A wry grin. "You must have some stories behind you, Courier. _Serve!_ "  
  
Takes longer than it should, if only a moment, to realize he's switched to talking to someone else. Too much in Ulysses's head reeling by, has to orient himself.  
  
Marinus barks angrily at the woman. "Get this man rations! Quit your sniveling, did you not hear me?"  
  
Takes a step toward her, where she stands behind Ulysses. Ulysses puts a hand to his chest to push him back. Doesn’t think about it.  
  
Doesn’t turn to see the slave. Doesn’t know what he'd do if it's--  
  
Marinus looks at the hand, looks up at Ulysses. "What is it brother?"  
  
Doesn't know.  
  
They regard each other a long moment, younger and older. Ulysses doesn't know what it is on his face that shows, puts fear on the face of Marinus, just for a moment.  
  
Was another name for this man once. Ulysses wore it on him. From the day the babe was given it to the day the Bull cut it off him.  
  
Marinus opens his mouth and he can see, from the set of it. Knows like a premonition. It will be a name that comes, but it will not be Ulysses.  
  
Name's dead. They cut it from him, from Marinus, from her.  
  
Dead.  
  
Doesn’t want to hear it.  
  
Finds the strength in him to step past Marinus, and he doesn't stop.

**Author's Note:**

> Come curse my black soul on [Tumblr](https://atomicreactor.tumblr.com)!


End file.
